How to use chat in webcasts

Engage your audience during a presentation through live chat. Your delegates will be able to post any questions or comments that will then be viewable publicly and will allow you to connect by posting a response. There are a few tools to manage your chat effectively, and this article dives right into them.

How to add Live Chat into your webcast presentation

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When creating a new webcast, or editing one you can enable Public Q&A widget which is essentially a live chat. Simply slide the slider to ON, enter your title and description of the chat so that your viewers know what it’s for and toggle any other settings in there, such as Chat Moderation or Read-Only mode.

My Chat 

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You will also have your own 'My Chat' tab where you will see only the questions you ask, the replies to those posts as well as posts that you may have been assigned. Essentially, this becomes your own ‘inbox’ to manage.

A post that has been assigned to an administrator will always turn pink and when you have interacted with that post it will return to normal colour.

Threads

Chat will display in easy to follow threads so you can find comments about something of particular interest to you, grouped together. If anybody responds to your message, you will see the number go up in ‘Reply ()’ area where you can click, view and respond to all the replies in that thread or alternatively view them in ‘My Chat’.

Attachments

You may attach a file or image to share with other users. Please note that these are for public use so content must be appropriate. Simply click on the paperclip icon to upload your attachment.

Who’s typing

The system will also let you know which users are responding to your posts by displaying ‘username is typing’. It works the other way round too, so whenever you respond back to your messages, the ‘typing’ message will appear at the top.

Read Only Live Chat

Some users visiting your booth when it's Offline, may want to catch up on the chat from earlier in the day. Setting the live chat to Read Only allows them to read the previous live chat posts and comments, but removes all ability to chat from this area. 

To turn it on, simply select ‘Read Only’ from the chat dropdown in Booths - General > Communications. Turn your Offline contact method on and click ‘Update’. The ‘Read Only’ chat will be accessed by a smaller button underneath the current online/offline chat box at the top of the right-hand booth panel.

Chat Moderation

You can also moderate live chat should you wish to, so any posts that come in are not public automatically and they will have to be reviewed by you or another admin before they are made public. This is not to be confused with private chat that is available only through people’s profiles. In order to use moderated chat you would first need to enable Chat Moderation.

To enable chat moderation in booths:

1. Go to Admin Area > Update content > Booths - General

2. Head towards the Communications folder

3. Tick Chat Moderation

4. Click Update in the top-right corner

To enable chat moderation in networking lounge:

1. Go to Admin Area > Update content > Networking Lounges

2. Select Chat Moderation and choose ON

3. Click Update in the top-right corner

To enable chat moderation in webcasts:

1. Go to Admin Area > Webcast

2. Choose a webcast and click Edit Webcast

3. Click Proceed and on the next screen under Public Q&A widget tick Chat Moderation

4. Click Proceed to go through the screens until you click Save

A new unapproved message will come in the chat and an admin will have to click a thumbs up icon to approve the message. Once the message has been successfully approved, it will be identified by a green thumbs up icon.

Assigning Chat Posts

Assigning chat posts is an easy way to make sure you are managing your live chat in an efficient way, and that all the questions get addressed by your team effectively. See below how you as an administrator can assign, re-assign and un-assign chat posts.

You can only assign a chat post to a moderator that is currently live in the chat, i.e. showing up in the right-panel with online attendees. Only administrators in the event will be able to act as moderators. You can only have one moderator assigned per chat post at a time.

To assign a moderator:

1. Choose the message you would like to assign.

2. Click on the pin icon on that message.

3. Choose a moderator you would like to assign the message to and click Assign. Keep in mind that they have to be online in the chat to appear in the list if you are assigning the post to somebody else.

To un-assign a moderator:

1. Choose the message you would like to un-assign.

2. Click on the pin icon on that message.

3. The current moderator will always appear at the top of the panel, then click Un-assign.

To re-assign a moderator:

1. Choose the message you would like to re-assign. You will know it’s currently assigned if the pin icon is green.

2. Click on the pin icon on that message.

3. Click Re-assign beside any of the available moderators.

Subscribing to chat posts

In a live chat, you can also ‘keep an eye on' your own posts and any chat posts from other participants. You will see an eye icon that can let you subscribe and unsubscribe to/from a message so you can view its replies and follow the conversation. If you have clicked on the eye icon it will make that message and all the replies visible in your My Chat tab view. When you post a message, you are automatically subscribed to that message and it will be visible in your My Chat tab. By replying to a message you automatically subscribe to that message, if you no longer want to follow the conversation you can unsubscribe at any time.

To subscribe to a message:

1. Choose a message and click on the eye icon.

2. Your subscribed message will appear in the My Chat tab.

To unsubscribe from a message:

1. Choose a message and click on the eye icon.

2. Your unsubscribed message will disappear from the My Chat tab.

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